Fun fact:
George W Bush’s entire campaign budget was 198 million dollars.
Citizens United is allowing this one billionaire to donate more than that by himself.
Also, compare the breakdown of the 2020 race:
https://www.opensecrets.org/2020-presidential-race
Biden’s campaign directly spent over $1B, and over half a bil of outside money (SuperPACs, I assume). Trump “only” managed about $1B combined.
IIRC, money spent directly by the campaign is also worth more; they get preferential ad rates.
Harris has already broken $100M in the first few days. Some of that was pent up donations from donors who wanted Biden out.
Dude was born and raised in South Africa pretending to be an American (much like Ted Cruz who was born in Canada) interfering in US elections. It’s fucked.
Our whole schtick is (supposed) to be that anyone who wants to come here and make a life here is an American.
There’s plenty of things to be pissed at Musk for, especially in relation to how his family made their money in Apatheid South Africa (emerald slave mines), but him being born elsewhere isn’t it.
That shtick is just a shtick. Every country with a functioning government has standards for who they’ll allow to immigrate and become a citizen, and Musk is precisely the kind of person I’d want to keep out. He’s making a life here as a billionaire, not an American, because billionaires have no real nationality, just flags of convenience. I don’t want him on my planet, much less in my country, and I especially don’t want his greasy money in our politics.
That’s cool and all, and I generally agree, but the sheer fact that he’s a foreigner isn’t something to go after
Yeah, this isn’t europe.
Well if we’re lucky, he’ll move to Mars.
Lol. These fuckers are all ladder pullers. Check out the tenets of project 2025. They want to kick immigrants OUT. Musk is donating $45 million per month toward kicking immigrants out. He got his though, so…
Yeah but the dude is also pro slavery. If you’re a foreign billionaire coming here to make money and promote slavery then I’m not sure I’m prepared to call you an American. No matter how historically accurate it may be.
Eh, now you’re getting xenophobic.
There’s a ton of reasons to criticize musk on without resorting to such stupid argument “he’s not a real 'murican”
To be fair, you can’t be President if you’re a naturalized citizen so the xenophobia thing is kind of built-in.
In this case, thank fuck because we’d have Musk running for President, guaranteed.
To be double fair that was written in there pretty explicitly as a preventative measure from the English getting a loyalist elected and reclaiming us.
I love Elon Cuck cosplaying as a “Texan cowboy” but too stupid to realize his hat was on backwards 😂😭🤡
What a dipshit.
Wait until you hear about this guy named Rupert Murdoch.
Or as we call him in his original country, ‘Cunt’!
That Aussie cunt and fat boy Elon were sucking eachother off this year in the same suite at the Superbowl whilst plotting America’s demise.
Well Putin did it, was found out, and - nothing happened so. Why not.
I’m not American. Can someone explain how they are ‘allowed’ to do this? Similarly, how is the war chest created?
Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert did a lovely series about this.
But in short, Donating millions to Trump. Illegal. Donating millions to Trump PAC. Legal. Trump can not spend Trump PAC money directly. Trump can say “boy I wish I had millions of dollars in political ads in a specific states at specific times about these specific topics.” Trump can also get pretty specific about the details.
What a racket.
You spelt democracy wrong. /s
Cleptocracy oligarchs. Yay!
You spelt Oligarchy wrong (absolutelly not /s).
Thank the corrupt supreme court.
Trump can also get pretty specific about the details.
I want the Big Macs to be wrapped in 100 dollar bills for the commercial. After the commercial send them to my room to make sure they were wrapped correctly. Do it even if we cut the Big Macs out of the commercial as well.
The Supreme Court declared money to be “free speech” and therefore protected by the first amendment. Therefore, if you are a billionaire and wish to throw elections to a fascist of your choice, that is protected speech.
The case is referred to as Citizens United. It’s also the source of the phrase “corporations are people, my friend” as it affords first amendment protections to corporations which are not people. Except in the crooked eyes of the fascist Supreme Court majority.
Short version: strategically place judges at all levels of jurisdiction, bring cases in front of them that upend protections aimed at preventing exactly that type of oligarchic power buying and thus rewrite the laws through these hoops until Freedom of Speech is conflated with buying elections.
You see, despite appearances, companies are actually people. Not in a real, people kind of way. Specifically, in a “the best of both for them” kind of way.
Then was have to remember that paying to circumvent and unduly influence democracy is, we’re to beleive, “free speech ^^^^tm” and, contrary to any and all logic, is actually very democratic. Then you have to remember that there aint no limit on freedom in America, baby!
If that doesn’t make sense to you then you’re a freedom hating commie.
The distinction is that a Super PAC, is explicitly NOT for the direct benefit of a candidate: it’s for the donors to use their free speech to publish messages of their choice.
It’s legal hair-splitting
Interesting fact about the timing. He started donating as soon as Trump promised to never release the Epstein files.
He started donating as soon as Trump appointed JD Vance as his VP. Vance is a protege of Peter Thiel, a Musk partner and Silicon Valley confidant.
Nobody is going to release “the Epstein file” (whatever the fuck that’s supposed to be) because Epstein was doing all sorts of shady shit on behalf of national security services in order to build compromat on people in conflict with those agencies. You didn’t need Trump to make any kind of promise for that (not that he’s particularly trustworthy anyway). What you needed was a guy on the inside, slavishly loyal to the Silicon Valley techbro community. And JD Vance is that guy.
Got info on that? I love the red string cork board shit
Hardly red-string. This is bog standard business news. JD Vance is part of the Thiel political incubator project, intended to finance both right-wing media projects and partisan electoral bureaucrats. He’s running the same playbook as Sheldon Adelson and the Koch Brothers employed a decade ago. A playbook they got from the O&G and Tobacco lobbies ten years before that.
If you’re looking to go down a rabbit hole on Epstein specifically, I might point you towards TrueAnon podcast. They did live coverage of the Gislaine Maxwell (ep 29/30) even getting into her trial. And they have a ton of material on the Koches (Ep 94/95), Elon Musk (The Lamest Show on Earth eps 1-3), and Peter Thiel (Palantir ep 105 and Survival Of The Grimmest ep 244).
TrashFuture does a ton on the Silicon Valley political networks as well.
Theil paid for his running for Senate and got him his jobs… Theil so happens to be a billionaire from PayPal, hmmm who else is a billionaire from PayPal .
Theil also bankrolled Hulk Hogans sextape lawsuit against Gawker, because nearly a decade earlier, Nick Denton (founder of Gawker) de-closeted him online.
Hmm who else was ripping off his shirt at the RNC.
(N.B. Nick Denton is an asshole here, but the moral of the story is don’t fuck with Theil because he holds a grudge).
I recently read (well, listened to) this book on the subject and it turned me on to the whole genre of non-fiction true-crime. I found it on Libby after hearing an author interview on NPR.
Not everything is some national security plot. Its completely possible that he ran that kind of service purely for private interests. For instance, Ralph Nader had people trying to do that to him hired by automotive companies.
Not everything is some national security plot.
This was explicitly a national security plot. Epstein had known associations within national intelligence, both historically and at the time of his arrest.
So does twitter and whatever. This is a guy who hung out with rich people including prince andrew. Any contact could have been purely procedural. Whether there’s a real plot in there still hasn’t been proven.
Where did trump say that?
Ohhhhh, a vast and deep conspiracy!
Get a life.
Probably tax deductible. Also, aren’t Tesla employees happy their owners gave their billionaire CEO a $50 billion bonus instead of sharing it with all their employees? Now they are just passing the bullshit bonus onto Trump instead of the middle class employees that work there.
Yeah but with the layoffs and impending implosion of the company people won’t be there for long.
He also planned to have a bulletproof window cyber truck. He should plan to get his head surgically removed from his ass. Since that is apparently where it’s been for a decade.
US is not a democracy, it is a plutocracy, an oligarchy
Is any other country a democracy? I thought for it to be a democracy you needed “everyone” to vote for every law rather than electing representatives.
You’re thinking of a direct democracy. The modern term is a catch all for everything from that to limited democracies that require things like land ownership to vote.
You’re foolin’ yourself. We’re living in a dictatorship! And how’d we get that, eh? By exploiting the workers. By hanging on to outdated imperialist dogma which perpetuates the economic and social differences in our society.
Tucker Carlson, famous proponent of democracy.
Is there a website that tracks the whereabouts of billionaires? If not, how hard would that be to build and maintain?
Asking for a friend.
That’s a great start. Now we just need a few dozen more. That way, we can all have greater access to a billionaire no matter where we are in the world.
People track Taylor Swift, Bill Gates, The Waltons, The Kochs, and others. There is no concerted effort, as far as I know, and people drop doing it, or pick up doing it, as they have interest, and time.
so they can complain about global warming without us knowing how much they fly private jets?
You get the president you
votedpaid for!Well the billionaires may want to ask for a refund considering how terrible Trump is…wait the billionaires know exactly what they are getting with Trump; a shitty President that will allow corruption to flourish and lower tax rates.
“Corruption” is such a bad word. When you’re the billionaire profiting from it, it’s just good words like “common sense policies”, “good business practices” and “it’s fine, everybody’s doing it”. And if you own the right media conglomerates, that’s then the public opinion too!
What’s crazy is what its probably going towards.
AKA bombarding a handful of pour souls with ads and messaging in swing counties where it actually matters.
It seems like such a waste.
In the end, most advertising is a waste.
If idk, all car companies came together, pooled their resources and knowledge and created joint car lines, using standardized optimized production lines across all of them, resulting in only one line of car per use case (one large truck, one small truck, a 2 person car, a 4 person car, a family car, etc etc) then no advertisement would be necessary. They could make the prices as low as possible to cover costs while still allowing some research into better technology. Everyone would just know/be able to find out “oh if I want a car I go to these people” and then you just choose the car that fits you, there’s no advertisement necessary because there’s no alternatives.
Of course, that doesn’t work because people are shitty, it would be a monopoly and the monopoly would jack prices up to infinity, the quality would be as bad as possible, resulting in an incredibly bad product for incredibly bad value.
But theoretically, if people were good and working for the general good of everyone, took pride in their work to do it as well as possible and deliver a product with the highest quality possible, the above scenario would work.
If idk, all car companies came together, pooled their resources and knowledge and created joint car lines, using standardized optimized production lines across all of them, resulting in only one line of car per use case (one large truck, one small truck, a 2 person car, a 4 person car, a family car, etc etc) then no advertisement would be necessary. They could make the prices as low as possible to cover costs while still allowing some research into better technology. Everyone would just know/be able to find out “oh if I want a car I go to these people” and then you just choose the car that fits you, there’s no advertisement necessary because there’s no alternatives.
Of course, that doesn’t work because people are shitty, it would be a monopoly and the monopoly would jack prices up to infinity, the quality would be as bad as possible, resulting in an incredibly bad product for incredibly bad value.
You are basically talking about a socialist or communist ecenomy, and there are good reasons that that is a horrible idea for certain industries (and a good one for others, and an even better one with some kind of bastardized hybrid system like the chip industry in Taiwan).
There is no best system, IMO everything should be evaluated a la carte instead of trying to centralize or privatize things ideologically.
Many private organizations that get like this are like the worst of both worlds though, where they lose the entrepreneurial spirit, efficiency and drive without any of the “benevolent” motivations and restrictions of a centralized system, especially when they get rich enough to push back against ethics.
I mean, I said it doesn’t work
I wouldn’t be too shocked if the PACS were being used to funnel money to people’s pockets instead of an actual PAC purposes.
Musk is a dumb piece of shit that didn’t earn his money.
Fortunately he’s one of only a hundred or so people evil enough to be a billionaire.
Good thing there aren’t any more evil people than that, given all it takes is the willingness to be evil enough to make billions.
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I was waiting for someone to bring this up, it would be hilarious if Biden does something to put a wrench in this plan as a last FU to the republicans
Now that he’s not running he can do a lot of last fuck yous and take the grenade for them. Don’t know if he will.
There were liberal billionaires holding purse strings about college students protesting the killings in Gaza. This isn’t a one-party problem. Though Repubs are more blatant about their corruption because they no longer have any shame.
Zionists aren’t liberals in my book. They’re just a slightly different flavor of fascists who dress up their sick ideology with a Jewish facade rather than the more traditional Christian facade.
Not necessarily- most Zionists are Christians- they have the belief that the apocalypse will be declared by the antichrist at the Temple, so they want Israel to take control of Palestine, demolish the Al Aqsa mosque and rebuild the Temple.
source?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Zionism
This should give you a bunch of sources- I learned of this from Dr. Bart Ehrman myself.
They’re “Christians” who enjoy a little bit of Jewish-flavored fascism as a seasoning for their Christian-flavored fascism the same way they might enjoy a bagel for breakfast once in a while.
There were liberal billionaires holding purse strings about college students protesting the killings in Gaza.
What do you mean by the verb phrase “holding purse strings about” here?
I know what holding purse strings means: one controls the money for an operation hence gets to decide.
But what does to mean to “hold purse strings about” these protests? You’re saying they were funding them? Or funding reporting? Or funding the schools? Or what?
What’s “about” mean here?
They threatened to withhold donations unless the universities cracked down on the student protesters. Look up Bill Ackman. That’s the name I know.
I haven’t heard that - can you point me to an article or something?
Look up Bill Ackman. There are others, but his name is the one I recognize from hearing about him on podcasts.
Billionaires shouldn’t exist. So many lives could be improved with this, it makes me sick.
The funniest thing about this is as soon as he can trump will betray him.
Everyone Who Supports Trump Will Be Shit On.
No Exceptions.
